Grabbing the tiger by the tail
by David Atkins
Sahil Kapur at TPM:
After spending President Obama’s first term emboldening the most ideologically intense elements of the conservative movement, elected Republicans are now finding themselves in a box on critical issues like health care and taxes with limited options to avert national crises.
On health care, Republicans are coming to grips with the prospect of owning a mess of a system if the Supreme Court overturns ‘Obamacare’ this month.
The central pillars of the health care reform law — guaranteed coverage regardless of health status, an individual mandate to buy insurance and subsidies delivered via exchanges — were originally crafted by moderate conservatives and have long enjoyed support in the GOP. But after Obama embraced the template, Republicans ran to the right and abandoned it in an effort to undermine him politically. Now, as they try to sneak back closer to the center, the hard-right base that they’ve empowered is giving them hell.
First came the warning shots from activist groups like FreedomWorks and Club For Growth, which most recently purged the longest serving Republican senator for taking moderate positions in the past. Then came the cries of opposition from conservative legislators in the party. The anger is reflected among high-profile conservative activists who are actively confronting party leaders for straying — and apparently making them nervous.
Of course, that presumes that Republicans are actually interested in governing. Or that they care if healthcare is in a crisis. Or that they actually care about either unemployment or deficits. Or, more darkly, that they aren't actively seeking a crisis.
It's understandable that many progressives are disenchanted with their electoral choices. On one side are socially liberal but economically neoliberal technocrats seeking vainly to prop up the current system by reinflating asset bubbles and hoping that the confidence and investment fairies will work their magic to reduce unemployment. Within that group are a small but growing number of people who actually do push for economically progressive positions but are usually drowned out by the big money boys.
On the other is a economically libertarian, socially authoritarian radical doomsday cult with no ideological variance to speak of.
A distasteful choice is still a choice, and it still has dramatic consequences.
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